Monday, December 03, 2007

Showing his usual vice-like grasp of conservative principles, David Cameron has called for a massive welfare program for Britain's neglected underclass, namely politicians. This being a Cameron speech, not only are the ideas stupid, the arguments are moronic too.

Consider Cameron's central point: the Tories can't shake down enough money from the grass roots to stay in business. Well, if so, that's a feature not a bug. About the only consistent theme of the Cameron wing of the Tories has been contempt for the base. Now, after years of being defamed as bigots'n'bumpkins, the grass roots have uprooted themselves, so Cameron thinks everybody else should be made to pay to keep his freak show of smug elitists in orbit.

Meanwhile, in the home of the spectacular campaign, voters are limited to maximum individual contributions of $2300, yet the sky has not fallen in. On the contrary, the reliance on small contributions has encouraged the American right to build up a genuine grass roots infrastructure. Here's one reason why the American right has been so much more successful in waging the culture war than the British equivalent.

There's another advantage to all this: by definition, the reliance on grass roots means the alleged professionals have a lot less scope to push their own agenda in the teeth of opposition from the base - see here, for the perfect example.

Needless to say, the Cameroonatics would place this sort of thing very definitely in the 'bug' column. The Cameron Party doesn't do ordinary people, and these latest proposals are just the latest iteration of their attempts to pull up the drawbridges and seal themselves off in the Westminister Village, never again to have to deal with anything as loathsome as actual voters.